


In the night, in the dark

by a_haunting_of_four



Series: The quiet weight- [1]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Moving In Together, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Trust, ghosts and hauntings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:00:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21563407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_haunting_of_four/pseuds/a_haunting_of_four
Summary: For the rest of their lives, all in attendance will remember their grandmother’s funeral as the day Loki made a scene about the dress she was buried in, shouting nonsense as Odin dragged him away with an iron grip on his arm that left him bruised.Thor, three years older than his brother and reeling with loss, remembers being afraid of their father for the first time in his life.So he lies.
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Series: The quiet weight- [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1554031
Comments: 23
Kudos: 83
Collections: Thorki Big Bang 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the thorki Big Bang 2019.
> 
> Art by the Emily Edlund! please go give her some love and check it out <3
> 
> https://emmatheslayer.livejournal.com/613904.html

Frigga buys them their first suits for their grandmother’s funeral. Thor hates his the moment he sees it.

It’s stiff, and tight, and Thor puts it on without complaint because mum’s eyes were still red and puffy when she came in to dress him in the morning and he doesn’t want to see her crying again.

He goes looking for Loki to complain to instead, because Sif won’t be here until later and he’s uncomfortable _now._

People have been coming in and out of the house for days now, and it feels strange to have it all to themselves again, for a few hours at least. It’s too quiet.

When their grandfather died they went to _his_ house for the funeral, and he does not know what to make of it. Maybe, he thinks, it’s just because no one is keeping Nanna’s house like Uncle Tyr kept Grampa Bor’s. He had moved into just a few days after the funeral and it doesn’t feel fair. They never spent as much time there as they did Nanna’s, no holidays or sleepovers were ever hosted, so to loose Grampa Bor’s would be fine. He doesn’t want their grandmother’s house sold to strangers who will change the way she kept things and change the locks to keep them out.

It’s an uncomfortable thought, and it makes him take the stairs two at a time as he heads upstairs. He can hear Loki’s voice now, probably rehearsing the poem he said he wanted to read at the service. His bedroom door is shut, but that has never stopped Thor from barging in before and he doesn’t see why it should stop him now.

Only it doesn’t sound like Loki is alone.

When steps on a loose floorboard, the voices quiet.

He is still frozen right there in the hallway when Loki opens his bedroom door. He doesn’t look surprised to find Thor waiting for him there. “What?”

“Nothing,” Thor lies. “Mum and dad called and said they want us waiting for them downstairs. They’re running late.”

Loki mutters something rude under his breath (to him, to the world, one never knows with Loki) and lets go of the door to go rummage through the mess on his desk until he finds the creased printout of his poem. Thor takes half a step back away from the door jamb.

He feels queasy and it must show in his face because Loki frowns at him from the other side of the room.

“What?” he repeats, more exasperated this time but for a moment Thor swears that he sees something like anticipation in the way he fidgets, looking between Thor and the bed for a split second.

“Nothing,” he doubles down and only just moves out of the way before Loki stomps past him with another angry whisper, heading down the stairs without a backwards glance.

Thor takes one last look at his brother’s empty room, and bolts.

He says nothing, and they wait sitting on the porch steps for their parents to show up at his insistence.

The viewing is a disaster.

For the rest of their lives, all in attendance will remember their grandmother’s funeral as the day Loki made a scene about the dress she was buried in, shouting nonsense as Odin dragged him away with an iron grip on his arm that left him bruised.

He is ten, and when he explains to his parents how he _knows_ it earns him a slap on the mouth from their mother. Immediately, she looks horrified to have done it but Freyr is dragging her away before she can apologise.

Odin is furious.

And Odin is wearing a belt.

Thor, three years older than his brother and reeling with loss, remembers being afraid of their father for the first time in his life.

So he lies.

Back home, their parents sit Loki across from him at the kitchen table, face red and sore from crying, his eyes exhausted and holding his weight awkwardly away from the seat of his chair. They ask him, in so many words, if Loki is telling the truth but it’s not really a question.

_No,_ he says, and all it takes is a word to tell them what they want to hear, and what he wants to believe.

It costs him a brother he will spend the rest of his life trying to earn back.

-

He goes into placement a year before most of his engineering class, hired on by a contracting firm. His first paycheck is enough to settle the rent deposit on a flat he has been eyeing for a couple of months. Thor moves in and promptly spends the rest of October building shelves for the second bedroom across his own.

His next big investment, a year later, is a second hand minivan with a large enough trunk that he can keep his kit with him and more besides when they’re working offsite. It earns him more than a few favours from people he works with and a slew of emojis from Loki when he sends him the first pictures of the beaten old thing. When he asks if Thor is willing to rent out the backseat to him when he’s on the run for Odin’s murder, Thor doesn’t stop to think before he offers him the spare bedroom in his flat instead.

Loki stopped responding to his messages after that.

These days, he gets most of the news about his brother from their mother. That he is still set on taking another gap year before uni (as much as it can be a gap year when Loki has been formally apprenticing under Heimdall for the past year, as far as Thor can tell). She tells him that he has been haunting the house more than usual now that his friend is taking a year abroad, but still does Mrs Willis’ shopping for her on Saturdays. That he fostered a guinea pig, of all things, before Odin made him take it back to the shelter after two weeks.

That last one she seems especially bewildered about and Thor can’t blame her.

He likes that him and his mother talk for longer these days, but it sits oddly with him that him and Loki seem to have taken a step back, seemingly out of nowhere.

Things have been better between them, even with this new radio silence, since Thor moved out. It doesn’t have little to do with the fact that there is more space between them and less frustration to take out on one another without their father’s input. For one thing, it’s also considerably harder to hold a shouting match over the phone when the other person can simply hang up. Or refuses to pick up your calls all together.

Thor rarely talks to Odin these days, save for the times his mother puts him on the phone, and he thinks they are both all the better for it.

He tells himself that he won’t push the issue about the flat this weekend, that he is driving up for work, but he clears his trunk of all the junk has accumulated in the past few months before making the drive to his parents’ all the same. The courses he know Loki prefers all have a late start in February. He would have time to settle before he even has to think about applying formally. Would have all the freedom that Thor could afford him to make their shared space his in a way he know he can’t at home.

There is only a slim chance that Loki will consider it. But if nothing else, Thor has never been lacking in optimism.

He wants to try.

-

His mother comes out to greet him the moment he steps out of the car and Thor has to wonder if she wasn’t peeking out of the porch windows all afternoon, hoping to catch him pulling up to their driveway.

It makes him feel a little guilty that he hasn’t been up here in months, even after he got the van. The trip is only about three hours in good weather, and they’ve had plenty of that this summer.

Odin is setting the table for dinner for dinner, which he promptly delegates to Thor after a firm handshake. He has a matter-of-fact ‘it’s good to see you, son’ for him as well, which Thor doesn’t doubt is honest. Odin has never bothered with saying something he does not mean.

Loki walks in just as they’ve finished clearing the dishes and Frigga has put the kettle on for tea. 

Thor sees him coming through the kitchen window first, well before the back door screeches open. He steps in looking windswept and handsome for it in the dimming light of the evening.

If he looks a little caught off guard to see Thor, he quickly settles his expression into one of calm detachment when Thor smiles hello at him.

“You’re in late,” Odin’s voice cuts through the moment.

“I was held up at work,” Loki replies evenly, and deliberately walks around the table to greet their mother with a kiss without sparing another glance in his direction. “Sorry mum.”

“That’s all right, sweetheart,” she cranes her head to smile up at Loki and Thor catches the way she quirks her eyebrow at him. Loki has always had a way of twisting his lip when he is begrudging her something that makes Thor want to bite him.

“Thor,” he greets simply and the way he says it, with just enough of an edge of aggravation to lend a lilt to his name, is admittedly a little funny.

“Hi Loki.” His brother shoots him a look that says ‘wipe that smile off your face’ and _doesn’t_ sit in the open chair to Thor’s right in a way that feels very pointed. He wonders, a little belatedly if Loki isn’t glaring at him more because he took his usual seat than because he has an issue with Thor being home. 

It’s likely both.

“This isn’t a restaurant, or a hotel, for you to waltz in as you please,” Odin has never had to raise his voice to command the attention of the room back to him, and the way their mother’s mouth tightens into a line tells him that she knows where this is headed. However much she might disagree with their father, though, Thor has never seen her antagonise him in public. Not in front of them at least, and as much as it has chafed over the years, Thor thinks he understands why. “Whatever you seem to think. I hope you’re not expecting dinner.”

Loki looks unfazed.

“I’m not hungry,” and he’s walking away with the click of the kettle before Odin can say anything else. “Wouldn’t say no to some coffee, though. Are we out of instant?”

“There is some in the cupboard,” Frigga calls back to him and the way she reaches over to lay her hand over Odin’s could be taken for casual affection if Thor wasn’t watching his father carefully enough to catch the way he very consciously seems to sink deeper into his chair with a deep exhalation.

Thor offers to help fix their drinks and if Loki still doesn’t look happy about him moving around in his general vicinity, he isn’t outright glaring at him anymore. He only bumps him away a little when their shoulders brush, and it’s almost playful.

He offers an olive branch by letting Loki through to the dining table first so he can claim his seat back from him. Loki only rolls his eyes a little as he takes it.

They talk about Thor’s work, about Frigga’s new book, and for most of it, it’s about as ordinary an evening as they have ever spent together. If Loki is a little quieter than Thor can remember him ever being when mum and him were reading a novel together, Thor chalks it up to him being tired. He looks it. Thor couldn’t have shared a bathroom with Jane Foster his first year of university or the same morning lectures with Sif for years without getting to know how foundation looks over eye bags.

Odin only stays for a little longer than it takes him to down his tea before he excuses himself with the announcement that he’s meeting a former colleague for drinks down the street. Loki looks a little lighter the moment he walks out the door, and Thor can’t blame him.

“So you’re here for work,” Frigga’s smile highlights the winsome wrinkles around her eyes, “but you haven’t explained what you are actually doing. Nothing in town, is it?”

“A bit further out. We’re drawing up a bid for the property project down Bowhill Lane.”

Loki perks up at that.

“I heard about that,” he taps on the side of his mug. “Someone came by the shop the other day about the furniture they found stored in the attic. Are they auctioning off the place?”

Thor shakes his head, smiling.

“Bed and breakfast. They are flipping the entire building back to its former glory.”

Loki shakes his head and finally smiles back.

“People want to vacation,” he leans back in his chair, looking the most receptive he’s been all night, “here?”

Thor shrugs.

“Apparently so.”

“There are beautiful mountain trails just an hour away,” their mother defends. “There’s the botanic gardens, the old chapel trail.”

“And the best chip shop in miles,” Loki nods sagely.

“Funny,” Frigga swats him lightly but she’s laughing now as well. “So you’re here to draw an estimate for the remodelling costs?”

“Can’t you do that remotely?”

“We already have, for the most part,” Thor answers his mother first, “and what we have so far we have been handling from the office, but there’s a couple of details we want to case in person before settling on a figure,” and this part he directs to Loki. “I was actually hoping you could come down with me tomorrow to have a look at some of the vintage fixtures they want to keep on. And,” he continues when Loki looks ready to interrupt, “there’s also a staircase I could use your eye on.”

“I’m not an electrician,” Loki crosses his arms across his chest, “or a licensed conservator. I make repairs on the side.”

“You restore furniture,” Thor corrects, “and you’ve been going to estate appraisals with Heimdall since last October.”

“Who told you that?” Loki asks as if Frigga’ placid smile wasn’t answer enough. He crosses his arms. “Ask Heimdall to go with you, then, if you trust his judgement. The new owners already know him.”

“I trust his judgement _about you,_ ” Thor clarifies, “and I can’t afford Heimdall’s fees.”

“But you can afford mine?”

“I can afford buying you dinner at the best chip shop in miles.”

Thor isn’t sure if his brother looks more offended at being valued at around five pounds a supper or their mother’s cackle.

“As lovely as this is,” she scoots back her chair still with a hitch of laughter in her voice, “I’m for the shower. Can you get the dishes for me, loves?”

Thor says yes for the both of them, and the way his mother playfully pinches the extra skin under his chin makes him squirm and feel all of twelve for a moment. She leaves them with a good night, and with that it’s finally just the two of them in the kitchen.

Loki goes straight for the dishes without a word. Thor lets him and busies himself with getting things back into the fridge (just the milk) and the pantry.

He cannot help but notice that there is no ‘decaf’ label anywhere on the small, glass jar of instant coffee.

“Are you working on a project?” he asks. Their parents have never been much for coffee, and he had thought that Loki had switched to decaf after it started to make him dizzy and his hands shake.

“What, tomorrow?” Loki has to raise his voice a little for it to travel over the clatter of the dishes and the running water. He looks back over his shoulder but turns back down to the bowl he’s scrubbing when he catches Thor’s eye. Shrugs. “Maybe. There’s a set of chests that came in yesterday. I don’t get to work with leather much, and they’re lined, so.”

Thor closes the doors to the pantry, thinking.

Loki is already placing the last of the flatware on the drying rack by the sink when Thor comes brings him the used mugs.

“Your turn,” he says, and steps away from the sink, already drying his hands with a dish towel. Thor expects that he will just leave after that, and that he will have to try again tomorrow. It’s a pleasant surprise when Loki chooses to linger by the counter instead, watching his hands.

It didn’t escape him that Loki did not help himself to dinner after Odin left and he doesn’t like the thoughts that cross his mind.

“I can cook something for you, if you’re hungry,” Thor offers, trying to keep his voice casual.

The way Loki rolls his eyes at him, it’s still a bit on the nose.

“I can cook, Thor,” he leans his hip on the ledge and crosses his arms again, “and there’s leftovers in the fridge. Odin isn’t checking them to make sure I’m not eating his food. I’m really just not hungry.”

Thor hums, unconvinced, but he doesn’t push it.

He’s about getting done with the last mug when Loki fidgets with the kettle, flicking the switch up and down. There is the hiss of rising steam from the dregs of water at the bottom when he leaves it on for too long, but he shuts it off again and the kettle quiets.

“What time would you be heading down to the house,” he finally asks, scratching the remainders of a tag off the power cord.

Thor shuts the water off and turns to him, giving him all his attention.

“Six,” he considers, “Six thirty, maybe.”

“That late?”

“Yeah,” he uses his hands to crack his back and grunts when it cracks. “Sorry. They’re having someone meet me there to hand me a copy of the keys and they were only free after five. It’s about a thirty minute ride? So I should be there at quarter to.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Plenty of sunlight still at that hour. It’s summer. I just need an hour, two, to finish taking some measurements. Pictures,” he eyes Loki significantly and smiles. “Could make it in less if I had some help.”

Loki is chewing on the inside of his cheek.

“Alright,” he nods, more to himself than Thor for the way his eyes stay somewhere on the cabinets behind him. “I should finish at the shop at four tomorrow, anyway. I’ll meet you here.”

“I could pick you up,” Thor offers, but Loki shakes his head no.

“I’d rather here if it’s all the same to you.”

“Fair.”

There is an awkward pause where they both just stand there, but it scatters when Loki pushes off the counter with a surge of energy.

“Well, then. Odin should be back soon, and he’ll want to have a chat with you, probably,” and just like that he’s sweeping out of the kitchen with quick steps. “See you tomorrow.”

“Loki, wait,” Thor stops him before he can leave the kitchen, trying for his arm and catching his wrist instead. He can’t help the way his thumb flexes against the bone there, light and reflexive, in a way that’s almost a caress. It stops his brother in his tracks.

It must be the change in brightness between the hallway and the kitchen, but Tor catches as Loki’s pupils dilatate when he turns back to him and it catches something in him off guard for how intimate it feels. It’s a physiological response, helpless, and it makes his brothers eyes look deeper.

He forgets what he meant to ask and feels caught.

“I’ve missed you,” he confesses, voice low between them.

Loki’s finger brushes his before he finally pulls his hand away. His eyes are very dark.

They are still rooted on the spot when they hear Odin coming up the driveway, the loud rustling of his keys of his keys by the front door. He never knocks. 

“Almost thirty years of living in this house and you’d think he’d learn which key goes into which lock,” Thor tries to dispel some of the tension and it earns him a tired smile.

“Yes, well,” it sounds like Odin finally found the right latch and Loki looks suddenly eager to go. He still lingers a moment longer, waits right until the latch turns, before to turning to go again. “See you tomorrow.”

“Night, Lo,” he whispers at his brother’s back. Loki’s shoulder twitches as he turns the corner of the landing up the stairs and Thor knows he heard him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The house.

Thor wakes up to the shift of weight lifting off from the foot of his bed, like someone standing.

His eyes are so dry they hurt, and it takes him a moment to work past the discomfort to open them. He squints blearily at the wall a couple of feet away before it registers the sharp pain on his neck for what it is. He fell asleep on his front with his neck at an odd angle, the pillow jammed under his jaw. His left arm, caught underneath his weight for however many hours he has slept, is completely numb.

He goes about rolling himself over, off his arm and twisting his neck carefully into a kinder position with a pained groan. He rolls his shoulder back and winces when his arm starts itching with the rush of blood back into his veins. Thor keeps still and waits for it to pass.

The side of his neck feels cramped, and he resigns himself to sleeping on his back but an uneasy feeling in the back of his mind tugs him awake just as he starts to doze off again. It wasn’t the pain in his neck that woke him.

Someone was sitting at the foot of his bed.

The door makes aa whisper where it brushes over when it swings open, he reminds himself, and _that_ he would have heard even half asleep. So whoever it was, they are still in the room with him.

He turns onto his right side, where some light filters in through his bedroom window, and freezes.

For a wild moment, he thinks that it’s Loki crouched next to his bed, face level with him.

A split second later the shadow is gone, and all the breath in his lungs leaves him with a heaving exhale.

Sleep paralysis, he thinks, mind reeling. An optical illusion because he left his bag by the side of the bed and he was still dreaming, only half awake. He is alone in the room.

He sits up, back against the headboard, as his eyes adjust to the darkness. Waits until he can see every corner of the room clearly in the half-light before untangling his legs from the sheets which are sticking to his skin with night sweat and venturing out into the hallway.

The house is silent. He can barely make out the way Odin almost-snores coming from the end of the hallway, breathing uneven in sleep ever since he broke his nose years ago. He relaxes, secure in the knowledge that he’s home, surrounded by familiar things.

He doesn’t bother with the lights as he makes his way downstairs. It only briefly registers that there is a freshly rinsed mug in the sink, as he tops a glass with tap water. Thor writes it off as Odin’s, from when he left his father downstairs to watch a late night show.

Back upstairs, he almost misses the dim light filtering from the bottom of Loki’s bedroom door. It only catches his attention because there is a crack from within. Thor recognises the sound for what it is; Loki’s old wooden bedframe.

The light isn’t bright enough to be a lamp, so maybe his laptop? Not his phone, because it wouldn’t be bright enough to cast off light like this. And this isn’t the cold glare of a blue screen. A reading light? Loki’s bedroom door had been shut for hours when he headed off to bed after his talk with Odin. Has he been awake all this time?

There was a time, not too long ago, when Loki would come into his room at night and sit at the foot of his bed, whispering his name, when he couldn’t sleep.

He thinks of waking to that same sensation only minutes ago and something cold settles on the back of his neck. With one last, unsettled glance at his brother’s doorway, he returns to his room.

It feels like he tosses and turns for hours, but he must fall asleep at some point. The next time he opens his eyes he is lying on his back and the room is lit bright by the late morning sun.

-

He spends what he has left of the morning going through his inbox and the preliminary budget for reworking the ground floor of an apartment complex, but once that is done he is free to waste the hours away. Loki and Odin had been gone for hours when he had woken up, which leaves him alone with his mother in the house.

They have lunch together, and he helps around the house some, before he sends him away on several errands so she can work on her jewellery in peace without him hovering over her shoulder. He’s to the off-license first to buy a bottle of wine for a dinner she’s been invited to, and then he goes on a hunt for whatever materials she’s shortest on at the moment. It ends up taking him most of the afternoon to round everything up.

When he gets back at five, Loki is waiting for him in the living room. By the look of his hair and the red imprint on his cheek, he had been napping right up until he heard Thor coming in. He demands his payment up front between yawns, and Thor is all too happy to stop for food before heading down to the old house.

They take their food to the picnic tables the council put up only a few years ago by the playground, and they watch the bravest pigeons approach them in hopes of catching a stray chip.

“You shouldn’t give them any,” Loki scolds him the third time he catches him pinching off pieces of potato and breading to throw for them, “you’ll make them sick,” and then, just because he likes being contrary, or maybe because one of the pigeons coos a lovely sound at him, Loki throws them some too.

He isn’t expecting it, but it’s a pleasant surprise when Loki starts talking, filling him in on seemingly everything that he’s been holding back for the past couple of months since they stopped talking. Thor lets him lead the conversation takes in the sound of his brother’s after so long without hearing it. Loki seems to listen back just as attentively, Thor likes to think that he’s not the only one who has missed this.

The only subject he steers clear of, are his plans for the coming year.

Thor’s university offers a foundation degree in Historic Craft Practices. It is only a twenty minute walk from his flat to the halls were they’ll be hosting the programme. And Thor knows that whatever Odin thinks, Loki has always thrived in a setting where he can learn something new each day and build something from it. He would do well in the course, could get certified by the board, and specialise.

They could build a life away from here.

He doesn’t say any of these things out loud, but he watches his brother’s eyes brighten as he talks about what he loves best, and his heart feels a pang of longing.

It’s still early when they’re done eating, so the stay on the benches for a while longer, enjoying the last of the sunlight before thin, grey clouds start rolling in from the east.

“Will you have enough light to work like this?” Loki asks, and Thor has been wondering the same thing.

He shrugs with a smile.

“I have a high power torch in the trunk.” Thor sorely hopes it does not come to that, but they will make do. The way the wind is blowing, luck might be on their side and the clouds will pass them over as they drive to the house.

He turn to tell him so, but he loses the words to bewilderment.

His brother is sitting straighter than he was just a moment ago, shoulders tense and eyes pinned to an older woman who’s crossing the street to an idling taxi on the other side of the park. Thor doesn’t recognise her. “Someone you know?”

Loki doesn’t answer, seemingly lost in thought, mouth turned down at the corners.

“Loki?” Thor tries again. The woman is gone when he turns to look between them again, but Loki’s eyes are still fixed on the street corner where she last stood.

It’s absurd, but for a split second Thor thinks that he looks disconsolate, eyes almost vacant. He’s already reaching out to touch his shoulder when Loki blinks the expression away. 

“No, sorry, I was just looking at her dress,” and if it sounds like a plausible explanation, it still rings hollow to Thor’s ears. “Do you want to get going?”

They bin their leftovers and walk back to the car at an easy pace. Loki finally deigns to regale him with the tale of the fostered guinea pig, with all the melodrama that the story merits until Thor is laughing a stitch onto his side and has to wheeze to catch his breath.

Still. When he’s sure that Loki isn’t paying attention to him, busy with his seat belt, he turns back to take one last look at the empty corner across the street and sees only that.

Pavement and weeds, and nothing more.

-

Bowhill Lane is more a of a long driveway than a creditable street, flanked by trees, empty meadows and disguised marshes. It’s old farmland, deep into the country but close enough, as Frigga pointed out last night, to all the sightseeing trails and the town itself to make for a good hotel. Thor can see the appeal in it and, by the heft of the investment they’re putting into it, so can the new owners.

The house itself, with its solid frame and deep foundations, will not need an entire do-over. It was built with a legacy in mind, but it needs to be rewired almost top to bottom, the pipes updated, the cistern drained of deposits; there are a thousand details more that need the care and maintenance that only good money can buy. He can spy a few broken windows even from where they’re standing by the car, waiting for their contact, and the impression the overall exterior hits closer to ‘haunted manor’ than ‘idyllic country retreat’.

When he says so to Loki it earns him an eyeroll and a (gentle) kick to the shin. He looks amused, but Thor catches him burying into his jacket despite the mild weather when he goes to retrieve the torch from the trunk. He makes a note in his head to stick close together.

They haven’t been waiting long when a very nice SUV pulls up to where they are parked, and out steps a middle-aged man who introduces himself as Bruce, the new property manager whom the owners’ have playing errand boy for the day. They shake hands and Thor pointedly ignores the way Loki shakes his head when he introduces his brother as an independent consultant, pleased that he’s put a blush in his cheeks and a smile on his face.

If Bruce takes notice, he says nothing about it.

He apologises for the late hour, explaining to them that he’s currently working at another site, something like an hour away, and that this was the earliest he could get away from his desk to hand them the keys to the place. Loki’s eyebrows shoot up at this, and he makes a face at Thor though thankfully the man seems to harried to notice.

Thor offers to drive back the keys to him when he heads back to the city instead of having Bruce wait outside or have him tag along as they have a look at the house, and it doesn’t take much to convince the man to accept the offer.

“That could work,” he sounds and looks so relived it makes his look almost a little cartoonish, but he’s genuine in his thanks, “that would really, really work, actually. I am authorised, technically, to release these,” he sorts through the keychain to set apart which he means, “to you on an indefinite loan for the duration of the project, but the rest,” he shrugs, smiling. “If we could keep them all together for now and I’ll have copies made for you when you come by?”

With that agreed, the three of them step into the house, treading carefully up the groaning front steps and across the porch.

Thor has been filing and working off of pictures of the place for weeks, the grand foyer still makes him want to take a step back in admiration, to take in every carved detail on the high ceilings like a painting. He hears Loki make an appreciative noise behind him and he doesn’t stop him walking ahead to stand in the middle of the room, at the foot of the split staircase that governs the space.

“So this is it,” even Bruce can’t seem to help craning his head about and follow the crown mouldings that border the entrance hall. “I trust that you know how to make your way around the place, and I’ll see you on Monday for the keys?”

“Yes,” Thor pulls his attention back to Bruce and offers his hand to shake one last time. “Thanks for coming all the way out here Bruce, we appreciate it.”

“On the contrary,” and Bruce looks like he means it, even when it’s clear that the owners could have spared him hours of travel if they had requested that Thor stop for the keys when he was driving up from the city.

Thor walks him to the door, reassuring him one last time that they’ll be fine and that he’ll contact him for “any questions, any problems, anything at all!”. Bruce doesn’t quite jog to his car but it’s a near thing.

He turns to make his way back into the house and almost steps over Loki who is suddenly just a step away behind him.

“Jesus,” he lets out a nervous laugh and grabs Loki by the shoulders to keep from toppling both of them over. “You scared the hell out of me.”

Loki gives him a wan smile.

“Sorry, just wanted to-,” and he gestures the torch still I his hands, “I don’t know how to work this thing.” Thor takes it from him with a shake of his head, sure that Loki knows how to use it but doesn’t want to be the one carrying it around with them. “So, where to first?”

They are only supposed to be making some notes on the ground floor today, but Thor won’t stop Loki if he wants to wander upstairs. “We start with the light fixtures and we go from there,” he gestures towards the wing that opens to their left gets and starts towards it with Loki close on his heels.

In the end they move through his check list much faster than Thor would have guessed, but it soon becomes obvious that they were right to bring in the torch with them. The sun won’t set for another hour but as they work the sky shifts from blue, to dove grey, to steel. They are losing light by the minute, and it makes time strange oddly as they work. Two hours fly by in a blink. More so as they are enjoying their work, engrossed in each other’s company.

Thor has never had the chance to watch Loki work before.

He seems to have an endless stream of facts and observations to share that make what would otherwise be rote examinations of three different kinds of the same thing. Thor may have the technical background and the inclination to improve on functionality, but what Loki excels in is in history and the details of an object’s life.

Thor catches putting his hands on everything.

He runs his fingers carefully over every surface he can get away with- over the detailed metal work of the sconces that line the halls, over shelves and doorframes- and for every thing that he touches he seems to be able to draw out visions out of every corner of the house.

Where Thor sees a solarium, with its wide, concave panels of glass and even floors, Loki suggests it was also a music room, inspecting a scruff mark on the floor. Where Thor has been labelling the series of open, spacious rooms as sitting rooms a, b, c, and d, Loki has been calls out “Drawing room”, “Studio”, “Sitting room”, and “Blue room”, respectively. It’s not that Thor is lacking in imagination or perceptiveness, but rather that where it takes him a moment to come up to an answer Loki seems to be able to walk into a room and _know_ beyond speculation. Even with all the furniture already off-site.

Perhaps he has seen more of the inventory that the owners left with Heimdall than he let on last night. On maybe it’s just a knack he has for making suggestions, dating materials, and complaining about the woes of polishing copper and silver all in the same breath. Before they know it, they are finishing up Thor’s notes on the anteroom.

There is only the staircase left and they can call it a night.

It began raining when they were taking he last pictures of the missing rungs of the wrought iron, spiral staircase by the service corridor, and the temperature has been dropping steadily. Thor can see goosebumps on Loki’s arm where his sleeve rides up as he holds the torch up for Thor to make some final measurements of the base of the stairs.

What the cold can’t explain is why Loki has been very deliberately _not_ turning his back on the staircase. Or why he’s keeping his eyes averted from the decorated newels that hold up the first floor’s balustrade and fillet when he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from them earlier.

He looks unaccountably nervous.

“Ran out of things to say?” Thor tries to tease him out of his silence. Even he can admit that the stillness of the house is a little unnerving. His right knee creaks as he comes up from where he has been squatting to get the figures for the run. “I can take that back now, thank you.”

As soon as he takes the torch from Loki’s hands, Loki stuffs them into the pockets of his jacket. It makes something prick at the back of his mind.

“This is old wood,” Loki finally says, gesturing with his head towards the handrail but keeping his eyes on the first tread. “Older than the rest of the house. Likely brought in from somewhere-”

He startles so hard all of a sudden that even Thor jumps.

“What?” his voice sounds too loud in the empty house as he veers around wildly to find _what_ he doesn’t know. The way the torch moves with him unwittingly makes it seem like the shadows of the house are coming closer and closer with every twitch of his hand. “Loki, what?”

He thinks of the crouching figure his mind conjured up, leaning so closely to his face the night before, and he feels a shudder go through him.

Loki isn’t looking at the dancing shadows all around them, though. Or even trying to keep the first floor out of his line of sight anymore. He’s looking straight up at the ceiling, in fact, and is rubbing at his cheek like-

Another water droplet hits him on the face, this time on his forehead and he takes a step back, drying it away with the edge of his sleeve.

“Nothing, sorry, I thought,” he blinks several times, like it would help him get his thoughts in order; his eyes are still glued to the ceiling. “I think you have a leak upstairs.”

As he says it, the glare of Thor’s torch catches on the surface of a two drops, falling one right after the other, in the exact spot where Loki was standing before.

_Shit._

“I’m going to need to check that out before we can leave,” he can’t seem to find the wet patch on the ceiling that would signal water damage.

It’s odd. He can still hear the rain pelting against the windows, lighter now than earlier in the evening. It hasn’t been raining long enough for any water to filter through the thick roofing, let alone the solid floors of the manor house. Even with a pre-existing structural weakness couldn’t explain it. A few second later the light catches on two more drops, thicker ones, and then a third. “It won’t take me longer than a minute. If you want to wait for me in the car-”

“I don’t-,” Loki starts but he lets the sentence trail off, pressing his lips shut. He’s hunched onto himself, shoulders almost by his ears. “Do you know what’s up there? The layout, I mean.”

He seems to be bracing himself against something when he says it, shifting closer to Thor. Whether it is to peer up at the spot where Thor is still aiming the torch to catch a better look, or something else, Thor can’t be sure.

The way the unkept windows of the house filter the little light they have left from the outside makes him look sallow, his features strained.

Thor does his best to stay level-headed and gentles the grimace he can feel marring his features. He’s been in enough derelict buildings by now that he knows how much easier it is to stay grounded when someone holds themselves steady for you. And he’s been Loki’s brother long enough besides that to know how to unwind him. 

“It should be one of the bedrooms,” he traces an estimate of the size with the beam of the torch. “Nothing more above it, so we shouldn’t need to go any higher than the first floor. The way the floors upstairs are proportioned,” he shakes his head, “you saw it from outside. It’s eye catching, but not very functional. You should have seen how long it took us to make sense of the blueprints.”

Loki hums to let him know he is listening but otherwise keeps his thoughts to himself.

The depth of the stair treads is deeper than they are used to in modern housing. Each step feels so solid beneath their boots that, if Thor did not know any better, he would have sworn that they were stepping on masonry, rather than hardwood; the frame does not betray their weight with a single creak or groan.

The same cannot be said of the boards in the first floor.

It’s darker upstairs, and Thor credits the fact to the narrow corridors and locked doors down as far as they can see in every direction. There is a set of towering windows towards the back of the house, over the landing where the split staircase meets and the panes of glass diffuse the glare of the cloudy twilight into a dusty sheen.

Thor keeps the light pointing forwards, as he turns down the landing off to the right. The room that they are looking for is barely a couple of steps away. Loki’s arm brushes his, they are walking so close together.

He thinks of Bruce riffling through the keys earlier as he thumbs through them one-handed, trying to find the skeleton key that should let them into the room, but before he can find it Loki reaches under his arm from behind to try his hand at the doorknob.

The door swings open weightlessly.

“Old latches,” Loki explains, when Thor takes a step back from the door, and like earlier it sounds like a plausible truth hiding a lie. “The wood shifts over time and,” he makes a motion with his hands like bolt scrapping off its keep, “the bolt doesn’t catch anymore.”

He looks calmer than he did downstairs but there is a stiffness to his frame and a twitch in his step that betrays the placid expression on his face.

Thor wants to say something along the lines of reassuring him that they are almost done here.

The words die on his tongue the moment he steps into the room.

“I don’t understand,” he voices, more to himself than Loki, and pulls out his phone to have a look at the screenshot of the blueprints he has been using all evening. When he looks up again Loki is stepping deeper into the room, passing him, and is looking around, a bewildered frown on his face.

For as much as the room smells of mildew and poor ventilation, there is not a single drop of water in sight.

It’s impossible.

“This can’t be it,” Thor does a quick round around the room, noting the undisturbed cobwebs and dust in the room, and circling around to the door. “These are solid floor. There’s no way-“

“Can you hear that?” Loki interrupts him at a whisper.

Thor pauses to listen.

“Hear what?”

“There.”

And there is something- a very faint sound, like coarse sandpaper on wood, coming from a wall.

They step closer.

And there it is again, this time fainter and closer to the floor.

It’s not rats, or the pipes that run through some of the walls of the house. It’s not something Thor has ever heard. Something isn’t right, and it chills him to his core.

It stops abruptly when Loki crouches to its level.

Thor watches him place a hand cautiously on the wall before leaning in close. Then closer when the sound doesn’t return. So close that his hair catches a stray cobweb off the wall and his ear brushes the wood.

Whatever Loki takes breath to say is lost to something pounding so hard against the spot where he rests his ear that it shakes the entire wall, and the rest of the room with it.

They both scramble back and into each other, and the room is deathly silent aside from the panting of their breath.

“We’re leaving,” Thor’s voice sounds strange to his own ears. “Now.”

He grabs onto the sleeve of Loki’s jacket and almost shoves him ahead of him through the door in his haste to leave the room. They only make it past the doorframe before Loki yanks back his arm and takes a swaying step back.

When Thor looks back to him, he feels short of breath, like he’s been punched in the gut. Loki stands frozen right on the threshold, face distorted in terror.

“Loki?” Thor hates the way his voice wavers.

“Don’t- Don’t. No, no, no, no,” and he repeats that same word, again and again, quieter and quieter until it’s lost in the rasp of his breathing.

It clicks that his brother is not looking at him.

He’s looking right behind him.

And it’s no longer just their breathing that he can hear.

He is holding the torch so tightly in his left hand that his fingers feel numb. The light is pointed towards the floor and it’s barely enough to illuminate their surroundings but Thor’s arms feel laden. No matter how much he tries he can’t bring himself to turn around. He can’t. He _can’t-_

His right hand curls into a fist; his nails dig painfully into the flesh of his palm.

He braves a glance behind himself.

Nothing.

And yet there’s a shift in the air, like something brushed past him, and Loki makes a sound like a strangled sob behind him. When he looks back to his petrified brother he watches as his eyes dart around the darkness around them, stricken, breathing so hard his chest heaves. 

If he can get Loki away from the threshold, Thor thinks, if he can pull him closer without scaring him further back into the room, they can make a run for the car and be gone from this place.

He’s just taken the first step towards him, when Loki seizes up so horribly that for a terrifying moment Thor thinks his brother is about to drop like dead weight on the floor. He reaches out with both arms to catch him-

Only to reveal another horror as he sweeps the torch up the length of Loki’s body without meaning to.

In that moment, his entire world shifts. 

Because the room is no longer empty behind Loki.

The torch in his hand clatters to the ground but they beat him to his brother, dragging him away and slamming the door between them. The whole building rattles from the impact.

Behind the door, Loki screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello dear readers. I know this chapter is coming in a little late but it's been a bit rough going over here. To anyone who sent any kind words, thank you <3

**Author's Note:**

> This story is finished. Updates every week!  
> Find me on twitter @honeyspice12 or tumblr (honey-spice-plaid)


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